“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his mater’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I leaned from my Father I have made known to you.” John 15:14,15
Last weekend I listened to a message by Tim Keller. In it he talked about spiritual friendships. He said that spiritual friendships are all about sharing, sharing feelings, sharing things, sharing faith, and sharing decisions. What is amazing is to notice that that is exactly what Jesus did with his disciples. These are not men who are in essence his equals, after all he is God, but men whom he lets into his life. He shares with them his feelings, his things, his faith, and his decisions, "for EVERYTHING that I have learned from my Father I have made known to you.” It’s the “everything” that takes me back. Is there anyone who knows everything about you or are you holding things back, afraid that people will be surprised or worse that they will reject you. Jesus shared everything with his disciples and thus he called them friends. If you lack friends today maybe it’s because you are not sharing your feelings, things, faith and decisions.
More than anything, I think Satan's plan is to get Christians to live in isolation to one another, ie "to divide and conquer". The early church shared everything with each other. (Acts 4:32) They had to, or otherwise they would have starved. I wonder if God in His sovereignty might allow us to be put in a position where we are "forced" to share everything. Maybe then we will know true spiritual friendship.
2 comments:
good thoughts, dennis. Thanks for the reminder / encouragement
The funny thing is, I think many of us realize this on some level. I think of it fairly often, and yet am the "foremost of sinners" in this respect. Having experienced at least briefly a couple of other very different cultures, I think this may be one of the greatest challenges we face here. Not truly reaching out to each other has to hinder our reaching out to those in need of His love.
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